Planning to start your holiday shopping early? Just make good decisions for your wallet and the recipient’s safety.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office estimates that the global sale of counterfeit goods tops more than $2 trillion each year. The damage goes well beyond economic repercussions because counterfeits are also cause for serious safety concerns.
Real Danger
Counterfeiting is more than a dollars-and-cents issue. Fake products cause real harm in the form of more than 70 deaths and 350,000 serious injuries every year.
Whether you mistakenly purchase knockoff electronics that catch fire or foods and perfumes made with poisonous, unregulated substances, buying a counterfeit product means taking a gamble on safety. Unfortunately these days, it’s not always easy to determine if you’re getting the real thing.
Shopping online is increasingly global, and you don’t physically see what you’ve bought until it arrives on your doorstep, making spotting fakes incredibly difficult. Many third-party websites knowingly list these counterfeit items as genuine products, often at what seems to be a great price. Worse, these scams are growing increasingly sophisticated.
Shop Smart
How can you stay safe and ensure you’re getting the real thing this holiday season? It starts with shopping smart.
Remember the four P’s:
Place: Are you buying from a trusted source, either online or at a physical store?
Price: If the price seems too good to be true, it probably is.
Packaging: Does the packaging look off—e.g., graphics and printing blurred, colors imbalanced, labels not on straight, misspellings?
Product: Does the product or labeling have a quality look? Does it look comparable to what you’ve purchased before?
Protect yourself when shopping online with these tips:
- Before browsing online, make sure your computer’s security software is up to date.
- Consider alternate payment methods to your personal bank cards, such as prepaid gift cards or disposable debit cards.
- Be wary of pop-up and banner ads when shopping online. Many contain false information that may lead you to a malicious website.
- Make sure that any website URL that prompts you to enter financial information begins with “https.” The “s” stands for “secure.”
- Don’t use the same password for all your online logins.
- Avoid shopping while on public Wi-Fi and from public computers. If prompted, never save your account information (credit card, password, etc.) to a computer that isn’t yours.
Counterfeiting threatens our health and safety and negatively impacts U.S. jobs and the overall economy. Remember these tips, and if you think you’ve been duped into buying a counterfeit, visit stopfakes.gov to report it to help others shop smart and stay safe this holiday season.
